Earth Set for Annual Halley's Comet Meteor Shower

As the Earth speeds towards a trail of debris left by Halley's comet, the Eta Aquariid meteor shower is due to be seen across the globe.

The Eta Aquariids happen every year, between mid-April and the end of May, as the Earth passes the point in its orbit that coincides with Halley's comet's cloud of outbound debris from its 76-year orbit.

The meteor shower is expected to peak on the evening of May 6, with up to 10 to 30 meteors being visible per hour.

This meteor shower is a result of particles left behind by the famous Halley's comet. Discovered in the 1700s, this comet orbits the sun in a long ellipsis, only passing the inner solar system every 76 or so years. The comet was last visible in 1986, and will only next appear in mid-2061.

During its forays into the inner solar system, the comet is heated up by the sun, causing a stream of dust and ice particles to be sheared off its surface. This material wake remains in space even once the comet is long gone back to the outer solar system, and as the Earth moves through the patch of space containing this debris each year, we get the annual Eta Aquariid meteor shower as the debris burns up in our atmosphere.

The meteor shower spans around six weeks in the spring due to the varying positions of the debris trails, but we pass through the mean position of the debris on May 5 or May 6 each year, where the meteors peak in activity due to peak concentration of particles. The spectacular shooting stars show these debris particles crashing to Earth at around 44 miles per second, burning up in a bright burst due to friction with the atmosphere.

The current orbit of Halley's comet does not leave a debris trail that coincides with Earth's orbit, the International Meteor Organization explains, meaning that the meteors we see each year are actually a result of centuries-old particles released by the comet many orbits ago.

The Eta Aquariids meteors will be visible in the constellation of Aquarius—hence the shower's name—which only emerges from the horizon at around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. in the northern hemisphere. This makes viewing even harder for those in more northern latitudes, as the sky begins to lighten during the summer at around that time. This year especially, the meteors will be even less visible due to the phase of the moon during the peak, which will be full on May 5, meaning that the bright light of the moon will obscure the meteors.

Despite the effects of the moonlight on meteor-gazing, the rate of meteors this year may be higher than usual thanks to Jupiter, which is currently close to the earth in its orbit and therefore may give many of the meteoroids an extra gravitational nudge towards the planet.

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